BethofDeath
Girls just wanna have pun
- Location
- Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh! I think I get where you're coming from -- the stutter in my vote isn't supposed to be full-on breaking down, or anything, just Yumi's throat closing up a bit from emotion. ...I should probably go put a note in next to the vote, to clarify that, huh? Good call, I feel.
Anyhow, despite what toxic masculinity (and the whole "anything that doesn't match up to that is weak" nonsense) would have us all believe, being externally stoic doesn't mean the emotions aren't there. Pushed down, bottled up, or whatever other longrun-harmful coping measures may even fool the person who goes through the experiences into thinking they aren't all that bothered... but those emotions are still there, and eventually they start leaking out. Sometimes with little cracks in the facade, like choking up a little when asking someone for help.
Yumi's only (mostly) human, after all.
Like I said before, Detective Kuzunoha is involved. His clan may concentrate on Tokyo in the games, but clearly in this world they assigned him to Mitakihara City. He also implied during the conference call that he's familiar with mind control magic incidents, enough to feel he can figure out whether the spell was wearing off on its own, from something in/near the police station, etc -- he said Yumi's new to this, and all.
We -- and as such, Yumi -- have a mindset where we have to do everything, despite there being a lot of other competent people around. And that's another load that, in-universe, would weigh on Yumi too.
To put it in metaphor: Lots of small stones add up to a heavy and awkward-to-carry weight, even if one's used to carrying a single large-ish stone. Handing some off to others walking alongside us is good exercise for them, and makes it less likely we'll not injure ourselves. Or, TL;DR: burden shared is burden halved... which seems to be a theme for Puella Magi quests lately, lol
And, to put it in storytelling terms: steamrolling the Human vs Enemies conflict means we're left with Human vs Self and Human vs. Socializing conflicts to struggle with.
That's exactly it, though -- it's not normal. So my vote is writing that Kohaku's reaction made Yumi realize that, whoa, yeah, this isn't normal, this is Bad, so she opens up a little -- and which all provides the Human vs. Self struggle that makes for an aspect of deeper characterization.
I'm not specifically aiming for Yumi to go all water-works in front of Kohaku, or anything -- I agree, that wouldn't be particularly in-character for Yumi, nor fit the goal of making Kohaku feel everything's going to be okay.
